Democracy

SINGAPORE (IDN) – After Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena's shock decision on October 26 to appoint his political foe of recent years Mahinda Rajapakse as Prime Minister, Western diplomats and the international media have expressed outrage at what they perceive as "lack of respect for democratic institutions" such as the Parliament.

But, within an hour of the announcement, Sri Lankan media broadcast images of people lighting celebratory fire crackers across the country including in Tamil-dominated Jaffna.

LONDON (IDN-INPS) – The Elders today urged Zimbabweans at every level in society to uphold the democratic rights to justice and peaceful protest, and refrain from words or actions that could incite violence, drawing on the counsel of their late Chair, Kofi Annan (1938-2018).

Ahead of the ruling by Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court on the petition filed by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change Alliance regarding the 30 July election result, The Elders called on political leaders to act responsibly to avert further bloodshed.

NEW YORK | LAGOS (IDN) – Next year’s race for the presidency in Nigeria just got a lot more interesting as a crusading journalist – an upstart known for exposing the millions and billions stolen by a national “loot-ocracy” – announced his candidacy for the nation’s top job.

As news spread that the journalist, Omoyele Sowore, was testing the waters for national office, President Muhammadu Buhari, age 75, reminded Nigerians that he too would be a candidate, ending months of speculation that the President might step down.

ROME (IDN) – When Mark Zuckerberg decided to offer emerging nations Internet.org, anger was not long in exploding. As Daniel Leisegang writes in ‘Facebook is saving the world’, this project which emerged in 2013 was a humanitarian masquerade: to allow Internet access to a huge number of Third World citizens who still remained outside the global village.

The idea was to break the barriers that prevent, for example, two-thirds of the Indian population from joining Facebook. However, besides India, the project was aimed at a total of 100 more nations.

BANGKOK (IDN) – The damage has already been done. Buddhists are accused of Islamaphobic communal attacks in Sri Lanka and tourists are cancelling their trips to the country as the international media follow a common formula denigrating the Buddhist majority, while ignoring questions that are being raised in the country on the timing of these latest “communal” attacks.

The violence against Muslim businesses and homes in Central Sri Lanka and in the East came a day before a no-confidence motion against prime mnister Ranil Wickremasinghe was to be tabled in parliament by the opposition.

NEW YORK | ADDIS ABABA (IDN) – The Ethiopian government has given itself sweeping new powers – from restrictions on freedom of assembly and free expression to the deployment of combat-ready troops in civilian centers. The newly imposed state of emergency is expected to last six months.

The harsh new limits on democratic expression – strongly criticised by the U.S. and the European Union – may have blindsided those in the international community who were expecting an opening for reforms with the surprise resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn.

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Is democracy in decline? If you talk about the quality of democracy the answer is clearly yes. The US, the world’s first and most important democracy – although at the beginning a limited democracy for white men only – is in trouble.

President Donald Trump has brought old problems to the surface – the money that buys candidates and policies, gerrymandering, an increasingly polarised electorate and a deadlocked Congress. He has added his own negatives – misusing his power to threaten his opponent, Hilary Clinton, with jail, waging a war against the media and attempting to make it clear that he has the sole power to use nuclear weapons and that he will use them against North Korea, even if North Korea has not used its.

AMSTERDAM (IDN-INPS) – In 2015, Dutch professor and human rights advocate Mirjam van Reisen was interviewed by Dutch radio station 'BNR Nieuwsradio' about people with ties to the Eritrean regime being employed as interpreters at the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND).

Van Reisen is professor at the Tilburg University and Leiden University.

In response to her remarks in this interview, the then chair of the Young People's Front for Democracy and Justice (YPFDJ) in the Netherlands, a nationalist Eritrean Diaspora youth organisation connected to the Eritrean ruling party, the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), started legal (interim injunction proceedings) against Van Reisen.

HARARE (IDN) – When Robert Mugabe resigned late November as president of Zimbabwe, hopes were rekindled that the country would finally be set on the course of a fresh start after 37 years of widely criticised authoritarian rule of this Southern Africa nation.

For years, under Mugabe's regime, the Southern African nation’s state security apparatus dominated the country and was responsible for widespread human rights violations, with Mugabe maintaining the revolutionary socialist rhetoric of the Cold War era, blaming Zimbabwe's economic woes on conspiring Western capitalist countries.